Facebook changed its parent company name to “Meta” on Thursday as the tech giant tries to move past being a scandal-plagued social network to its virtual reality vision for the future.
The new handle comes as the company battles to fend off one of its worst crises yet and pivot to its ambitions for the “metaverse,” which would blur the lines between the physical world and the digital one.
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — which are used by billions around the world — will keep their names under the rebranding critics have called an effort to distract from the platform’s dysfunction.
But Zuckerberg and his team are hardly the only tech visionaries with ideas on how the metaverse, which will employ a mix of virtual reality and other technologies, should take shape. And some who’ve been thinking about it for a while have concerns about a new world tied to a social media giant that could get access to even more personal data and is accused of failing to stop the proliferation of dangerous misinformation and other online harms that exacerbate real-world problems.
“Facebook just doesn’t encompass everything the company does anymore. In addition to its primary social network, that now includes Instagram, Messenger, its Quest VR headset, its Horizon VR platform and more,” said CEO Zuckerberg. “Today we are seen as a social media company,” Zuckerberg said. “But in our DNA we are a company that builds technology to connect people.” He said that the way smartphones have replaced desktop computers, metaverse will be the next way people interact with computers and each other.
What is the literal meaning of the Metaverse?
The term Metaverse is claimed to have been first coined in a dystopian novel three decades ago. It refers broadly to the idea of a shared virtual environment which can be accessed by people using different devices.
Will Facebook’s corporate structure change?
No, Facebook the app, along with Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger will continue to stay the way they are, as per the company. The company’s corporate structure too won’t change. Facebook also said that its hardware division Facebook Reality Labs will become a separate reporting unit. The unit responsible for the AR and VR efforts of the company will now be called Reality Labs.
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